


Black and Gold

by baethoven



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Character Study, Established Relationship, Existential Crisis, M/M, Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 09:31:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6074104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baethoven/pseuds/baethoven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Brendol Hux II, General of the Finalizer, and commander over a legion of men and women of great numbers and even greater force, had always measured his success in the material. Things that could be held, statistics read, and what could be felt was what grounded Hux and kept him moving forward."</p><p>General Hux looks upon the destruction of the Starkiller and faces existence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black and Gold

Brendol Hux II, General of the _Finalizer_ , and commander over a legion of men and women of great numbers and even greater force, had always measured his success in the material. Things that could be held, statistics read, and what could be felt was what grounded Hux and kept him moving forward.

It had started when he was a child, shortly before his time in the academy. He was a thin, waifish boy, with translucent, paper thin skin that revealed red and blue rivers of arteries running up and down his arms. His father had been a tall man of considerable mass; time seemed to alter and slow around him by the sheer gravity he possessed. Hux could sense then, even as a six year old boy, that his father found him _wanting_. Besides his hair - shining copper and fine as thread, a Hux family trait that was hard to mistake - the resemblance was practically intangible. Hux had his mother's features: her thin nose that bloomed delicately like a rosebud, milky skin stretched across sharp, regal cheekbones. He had her eyes too, the light green of summer, with specks of gold like sunlight filtered through emerald leaves.

"You look soft," his father would say, his disappointment rumbling deep in his chest and resonating around Hux, crawling up his skin and burrowing to his bones.

Hux strived to be everything his father wished, would run in the fields with the bigger boys from the nearby estates and get in fights, trying to prove he had the strength of his father's people. He would come home with busted lips, blood dripping from his nose and oozing down his face, onto his fine white clothes. His mother would encompass him in her arms, would clean his wounds before sending him off to face his father's wrath. Her actions were impersonal things, done out of guilt for the punishment that would befall her son, rather than love. Hux was not sure if his parents were capable of love, could feel the absence of it keenly as he would tread the long hallways to his father's study.

His father would sometimes just observe him, scanning his eyes over Hux's hair, wild from the places the other boys had pulled at, the bruises and black eyes, and would simply ask if he had won or not. It did not matter what Hux said, because his wounds were a shameful thing on his scrawny body, symbols of defeat no matter what the outcome of the fight had been. Other times, he would simply gesture to Hux to kneel, and cane his back with such finesse and accuracy that it was almost impersonal, like Hux was just another cadet to be disciplined, not his father's flesh and blood. Hux would kneel there, gasping in pain and glaring at the floor of his father's study, wooden floorboards with a lush red carpet strewn across, to the places where his tears would darken the fibers, and vowed in his heart that he would someday command everything in the galaxy if it meant his father would be beneath him and kneeling.

When he was packed away and shipped to the academy after his mother's death, his father had forbidden any personal items to be sent along with Hux. It had stung sorely, more than Hux would ever admit, to be parted from his books and play things. He could not care less about leaving the empty home and his father's frigid stares, was more relieved to be away from the heavy atmosphere that hung around, radiating his father's disapproval. His books had kept him company though, painting pictures for him late in the evenings of great heroes performing feats of strength, vanquishing evil. Sometimes Hux would be the hero in his dreams those nights, shooting blasters into a sea of enemies, fighting and winning in some unnamed struggle. Other nights he was the villain, cloaked in black and pulsating with control and power, the strength of it rushing through his blood into every capillary, every tiny vessel. He would look over countless thousands and wave them towards battle, would fly in massive ships through the black void of space and destroy all in his path. Despite the blessing of being vanished from his father's sight, Hux was sent away stripped of any good that he had managed to scrape for himself.

Hux had learned that his name would not garner him any favors in life; it had not stopped the neighbor boys from beating him to a bloodied pulp, why would it aid him now? Hux worked hard, studying longer than any of his peers, practicing his drills long after the rest had gone to sleep at night. He excelled in ways he never could beneath his father's gaze, and privately luxuriated in the praise of his instructors. His efforts were soon rewarded, and he moved up to harder courses, accelerated on a track that would someday lead him to a position of modest command, as his instructors had told him. Every report inked with praises and accommodations were like gold. Hux would gaze at his teachers' words, let the datapad weigh heavy in his hands under their significance, and he could feel his potential brimming within his chest. His ambition was suited for this environment, fanned into flames that began to consume Hux. The young child, with tear streaked cheeks and a lashed back was burnt away, and Hux emerged from the soot and ashes hardened. He saved every report, every award and letter of accommodation, would gaze at the evidence of his progress, and felt more assured by them than any childhood story could ever.

Years later, when Hux was promoted to General, his father had declined his invitation to the ceremony. Hux had invited him as a formality, out of family obligation but with no real desire to see the haggard old man. He had not seen his father since their terse parting before he left for the academy, and Hux had decided to live the rest of his life without ever occupying the same planet as him. On the day of his ceremony, a grand affair where they pinned his stripes and commissioned him on the First Order's grandest flagship, the Finalizer, his father had sent him a holovid. It was the first time he had heard his father's voice in years, and Hux watched the message with anxiety settling low in his stomach for this first time in years. _Congratulations on your appointment to General_ , his father had said in his brusque manner.

That had been it, nothing else, and Hux was not sure what he had expected. That was the first time his father had ever congratulated him, but it sounded wrong and gave Hux no peace. He attended his ceremony, stood before the crowd of soldiers and commanding officers and held his shoulders back and spine stiffly. When his stripes were pinned onto his chest, no sense of contentment came with the new pressure against his uniform. All he could feel was his father's hollow words that had told him that even this accomplishment was not enough. He was still a disappointment, and Hux knew he would always be unworthy of his father's affections and pride.

When he stepped upon the _Finalizer_ for the first time and surveyed the vast ship from the bridge, and gazed out at the unending black of space, dotted with the gold flecks of stars hanging suspended in the void, Hux felt the fire grow within his chest. It was not enough to command the ship and all the thousands of men and women on it that would obey his every command. As he gripped the cold metal of the railing on the bridge, cold through his leather gloves and solid in a way Hux and never known anything to be, the flames of ambition and desire flared higher. _I will consume the universe_ , he thought determinedly. _I will not stop until everything is under my touch and command_.

 

* * *

 

The _Starkiller_ was Hux's project, the next step. He had overseen every aspect of it; he had picked the planet after long months of research and travel, had organized the efforts of the First Order down to the last man. It rose from the bitter cold of the planet before Hux's eyes. After years of construction it emerged unlike anything that had proceeded it.

When Hux was given the command from Snoke to engage the weapon and eliminate the five planets in the Hosnian system, he anticipated a fulfillment unlike anything else. Within his palm was the power to bend wills, to raze planets to dust and bring the galaxy to its knees. He felt as much when he gave his speech, his power seeping into his words and echoing across the weapon and his troops like a fearsome wind. He watched as the weapon was fired, bathing the skies in red, and waited for the inevitability of this moment to reach a kind of completion.

As he watched the five planets incinerate in the fire of the _Starkiller_ , taking with them every lifeform and their billions of years of history, Hux could not feel more than a sudden emptying in his chest. His pride fled him, as did the uncertainty and anticipation of the better part of his life, and in their wake was a bizzare hollowness he had never encountered before. Lesser things had moved him to violent emotions, but the sheer display of his power drained him of everything.

When Hux returned to the _Finalizer_ , the upper command which occupied the bridge was buzzing with excitement. They congratulated him, spoke of the invincibility of the First Order, the sureness of the Resistance's defeat. Hux walked through them in a daze, blandly accepting their praises and doling out his own, feeling disconnected from them all. He escaped and stumbled to his quarters, desperate to be alone with the growing void in his chest. When he arrived to his room, he gazed out the window of his compartment. It had been a luxury allowed to him, to have a room with a view. He never gave it much thought, rarely programmed the blinds to open and reveal the starry expanse. Hux had never been a stargazer, never having time for beauty. Now, he sat in rapture before the wreckage he had unleashed.

He was not sure how long he sat gazing through his window before the doors to his quarters slid open. Hux did not need to turn around to know who it was. Only one person on the whole ship had access to his rooms. He detachedly listened as Kylo Ren walked into his room, boots heavy on his lush, red rug. The moment sat between them, thick with unspoken tension, and then Kylo Ren removed his helmet.

"General," he said in his low, lilting voice, "I came to offer my congratulations."

Hux nodded, still enraptured by the sights before him. "Thank you," he mumbled.

Ren approached him slowly, as one would when approaching a caged animal, before he stood right behind him. Hux could see Ren reflected in the glass. His face was drawn in concern, his eyes casted down on Hux.

"Look at what I've done," Hux said.

"I see it," Ren replied without moving his eyes away from Hux. "It is grand."

"It is an immaterial destruction," Hux mumbled. Something was beginning to creep over him. His spirit was clawing at his psyche, tearing at his walls and seeping the truth of what he had done into the gashes it left behind. "All that power, and it leaves nothing in its wake."

Hux felt warmth at the edges of his psyche; he had come to learn this was Ren, gently prodding his mind with the Force to read his thoughts. Usually he fought it, abhorred having his secrets and feelings bared for a man that had no hold over his own. At that moment he did not care, and he let Ren sift through the storm warring within him.

"It is not immaterial," Ren said, far gentler than he had ever sounded for Hux. He snaked his long arms around Hux, one across his torso, while the other gripped his chin. "Look before you. You destroyed five planets, you commanded thousands to bring you to this moment, and you laid waste to what stood before you. It is beautiful."

A detached part of Hux wondered in Ren could feel his heartbeat racing, his breaths racketing up in his panic. "There is nothing to show for it," Hux said, the words punctuated by short gasps. "I commanded a great force and it destroyed matter, left empty places where something was."

Ren tightened his vice around Hux, grounding him. "It is tangible, Hux. You consumed a star and you spat it's power out."

Hux's head was beginning to swim. Ren could not seem to grasp at Hux's crisis. _That's the problem_ , Hux thought blearily, _there is nothing to grasp at_. All his life he had the evidence of his successes and his failures within his palm, a legacy he could literally sift through. It was all real; he could hold his triumphs in his palm. Now, with his greatest accomplishment, nothing was left. In the place of his finest hour were five voids. In thousands of years those systems would not be on maps. There would be no evidence of anything Hux had done. Nothing would remain.

Hux had not anticipated to confront existence in this feat. As he gazed at the stars, he felt an impermanence settle within him, and he wondered if any of this was real. If the ship around him existed, if Ren's heavy arms and rough breath against his neck were happening, or if it was all a bizarre play of matter and atoms, swirling around and playing out life in a soulless charade.

"Hux," Ren said, his voice rough, "I can feel it all. This is real. I'm real, you're real, what you did was real."

It did nothing to slow the disassociation Hux was feeling. He stared at the stars, beacons so many thousands of lightyears away, impossible things to reach from where he sat. They could be illusions. It all could be. Ren pulled at Hux, a rough hand in his hair, and jerked his gaze away from the stars. Hux gazed into his eyes, those dark, starless things, and felt a greater sense of loss.

"It's all immaterial," Hux repeated. "Us, this ship."

Ren growled in frustration. "This is real, you ass," he said, and then he kissed Hux. His lips were soft things, a juxtaposition against Ren's harsh features. Hux had spent hours trying to resolve the curve of those lips against his long face. They had always looked out of place among Ren's strong nose and broad brows. He had tried to figure them out, and kissed those lips for languorous hours in search of an answer. As he kissed him now, his face framed by Ren's great hands, he could feel something kindling within him once more. Ren was solid beneath his hands and his clothes rough under Hux's fingers. Hux gripped him hard and felt beneath the layers Ren's frame, dug his finger into the taut flesh. Ren moaned deep in his chest and it vibrated against Hux's lips and down every one of his nerves.

"Your power is real," Ren said against his neck as he began unbuttoning his uniform, revealing Hux's skin to the cold of the ship. Hux gasped and ran his hands through Ren's thick hair, tangling his fingers in the reckless waves. "I feel it in you, no matter where I am." Ren mouthed a trail down Hux's exposed torso, following the path his nimble fingers cleared. "It was unbearable. As you killed those billions of people I felt it wash over me, everything you had done. I was drowning in your will."

Ren dropped to his knees and knocked aside Hux's legs to crowd into the space there. He rubbed his face against Hux's growing erection, mouthing at it as if it was some holy relic. Ren looked like a wraith there, a dark spirit come to undo Hux. He felt his skin flush, and the fire roar within him. It did not matter if nothing else was real, if Hux's ability to destroy planets and suns had left him in existential shambles. As long as Ren was real, staring up at him beneath a thick fringe of lashes like Hux commanded all the heavens, it would be enough.

Ren smiled darkly at him, as if Hux had yelled his thoughts into the room. He drew Hux from his pants and gripped his cock tightly, just edging the wrong side of pain. Hux gasped, feeling helpless and trapped in Ren's dark eyes.

"What you've done will never be forgotten," Ren said, his words ghosting around Hux's length. "The fear and destruction will be in the atoms of those destroyed planets until the end of the universe. Whatever becomes of it, your power will emanate from those molecules forever. Now, take the praises you so justly deserve."

Ren engulfed him in his wicked mouth, and Hux's existence was reduced to the slick warmth of Ren's tongue, and the vibrations of victory racking through his body as Ren glorified him before the floating destruction and unblinking stars.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by listening to _Black and Gold_ by Sam Sparro for the first time in years. Thanks for taking the time to read it!
> 
> If you want to come talk sin and Kylux with me, come by my [tumblr!](celloing.tumblr.com)


End file.
